paulears

Back in the late 90s, I was on the roof of a tall building installing antennas for a short term radio station I was involved with. In the equipment room on the roof was some rusty old electrical switch gear, and one of the big brown boxes had a button labelled 'test'. I pushed it. Great Yarmouth at the time had the WW2 air raid warning sirens still active and functional, used for flood alerts if ever they needed to warn the population and there was a siren on the roof, and the test button still worked. My God it was loud and worse, no off switch or way to silence it. I found a scratched local telephone number on the case, and called it. It was the Police control room and they said "We wondered who did that". I discovered that very few people knew the sirens were there and were still intended to be used - this sounds very similar to the new alert system. Who will actually know what is going on if their phone gets an alert?

Pre-Covid, the band did a show on home territory - my theatre in yarmouth, and as loads of the gear was there, we put cameras out in the auditorium, follow spot box and took a multitrack feed from the audio desk. Then covid hit and the files all got mislaid, then when they turned up - to save space, I copied them all to one folder. Sadly, this left me with the clips from the editor where I'd gone through cutting out the camera movements and rubbish shots where people were in the way. I had hundreds of clips with titles like pandb3 - but no song name, and worse this meant there were duplicates with the same names, which the computer had added a '1' on the end. Sadly, our keyboard player passed away so we sort of retired - we just didn't fancy doing it without him. I thought it would be good to see if I could recover the edit - just for nostalgia really, and discovered one camera shot was start to end - the wide angle one from the follow spot box, but all the others were 20-30 seconds long, with a few maybe a minute - they'd all then have a gap before restarting. The ones close to the stage had really distorted audio as it was so loud, but it let me work out where in the song they came from. I think I did a reasonble job at getting them back on the timeline and in the right places. If you hate the Beach Boys, then you'll hate this but for those who know how tricky editing (Premiere) is you might appreciate how the clips and the audio track got back close enough to be watchable.

This might be a bit long - so skip it if it's dull and boring. The snag here is that schools, then colleges and even universities never seem to do this right! If we take a typical show - any scale of any status, we have two groups of people - the performers and the 'managers'. Discount the performers and look at the rest. It may be odd to use the word manager, but the lowliest member of the entire team is a manager. They manage what they personally have been tasked to do. This is what separates theatre and events from proper jobs. Ignore the title - we have a job to do, and very rarely, if ever, do we have another person who is there to supervise and train us - if that happens, its partial - they have their job to do as well, so at some point we are on our own and have to make decisions. For this discussion, accept that as the production becomes more complex and has more money, then the quantity of people grows too. More things to manage = more people. We end up with historic titles, which usually make no sense. Assistant Stage Managers are an assistant to nobody. A Deputy Stage Manager is NOT the Stage Manager's Deputy. Trying to run a production with the common triangle of boss at the top and minions at the bottom might work for a factory (or a college) but not in theatre and events. Claire, above, was trying to get you to reveal context. This is because it's actually the things people do that are important. Common tasks that must be managed set what you do, and then a title gets applied - often randomly by people who have no clue either. Here are some typical task areas. Sourcing, looking after and repairing props Playing in sound effects - the gun shots in a play, the honking car horn outside. Giving cues to cast and crew during the show. Following a musical score. Operating Qlab on a Mac in the wings. Making Moving and setting scenery. Painting scenery. Completing a show report. Firing somebody. Doing paperwork. Operating special effects Conducting understudy rehearsals Sweeping the stage. Drawing plans. Unloading lorries. Risk Assessments. Safety. Enough there. All these things might need to be done at the local High School or the London Palladium. Done by people with titles such as. Assistant Stage Manager Technical Assistant Stage Manager Deputy Stage Manager Company Manager Company Stage Manager Production Manager I've ignored the roles who don't have the word 'manager' in the title. Very often the title in a pro production is allocated because there is a prescribed price for the job - not really to do with the role - as in what they do. In a school, college or amateur company, the title comes with a sort of status - often unfounded and misunderstood. So often, assistants could not cover the deputies job, or the deputy cover the assistant - sometimes people write down the list of what they do in case they are ill or off, and somebody can cover, following a prescription list of the show. Go SR, collect fan, bring back to SL props table ready for next scene. Turn on remote control, go SR and turn on prop etc etc. It sort of works. Allocating the jobs to the title can be quite tricky, but once a show is running, if it runs a long time, people will also start to provide cover for others maybe? Grace said she'd DSM'd before, but a DSM is not prescribed really. In most pro productions the DSM is in charge of running the show. They control when things happen and are responsible for adjusting things if problems happen. That could also be the Stage Managers role in a different production. Or the Stage Manager could not even be on stage during the show, but maybe in an office doing paperwork, listening to the show on the show relay speaker? Deputy Stage Managers and Stage Managers may have absolutely nothing to do with sourcing props - that could be an ASM job, or a Production Manager job - or even somebody in an office with a computer and credit card. The entire company and how their skill set is laid out matters most. In one of my slack periods I got asked if I would be Stage Manager for an amateur show. I went to one meeting and discovered they were a two tier organisation. The cast, and then two stage management who were expected to plan and do everything. One had already been picked from the performing arts department at the local college, and me. I never went back for meeting two. They didn't know what the job entailed and didn't want to. Totally fine - that's how they did their version of it - a Stage Manager and an assistant - who knew very little. If you are doing WWRY - then you will need a team of people. Quantity depending on their abilities to do the roles some of which I mentioned above. If there is a person calling the show and nothing else, I reckon at least a couple of people to be ASMs. Most Stage management folk are NOT expert at everything - they may be proppy and totally non-technical (but essential) or they could be a techno-wizard with absolutely no inter-personal skills. Some DSMs panic under pressure, others can call the show with their mouth, give cues with their fingers and kick a Qlab go button with a foot whilst whittling a wooden boat from a piece of scrap timber with a leatherman. If this is school or college, or worse a chaotic amateur company - you need to find out exactly what they think your job is, or you will inherit everything - including the flack when it goes wrong. I suppose in school and college, you also have to cope with people thinking you are being bossy and controlling, and then having the staff mess things up for you, because frequently if they have an acting background, they have no clue either about stage management - they just throw the words around. There is always an element of giving people titles. Whoever is in charge backstage should also of course be willing to push the broom, while clever fun stuff is done by others. Like in the forces, the pips on your shoulders matter little when there is a panic on. You let the best people do their jobs. My favourite comment said by me during one show - OK, I know she's feinted but get her costume off and give it to the understudy as soon as she comes off, just cover her up and keep her out of the way. I'm not quite sure who's job role that really was?

Just to update the old post. today was connection day and at 10.15 they emailed to say I was live. They lied. I have waited all day for repeated promises and at 5pm they said it would be complete this afternoon. they then went home and it's still off. SO - if you are tempted to join Giganet - don't because they don't answer the complaints option (2) but did answer technical (3) after an hour, and the 'technical' advice was to pull the plug out. I pointed out I'd done this every 30 minutes since 10.15, and that was the limit of her technical expertise. Complete numptys. I got a quick response to a complaint on Facebook - asking for the amount detail by messenger. I responded and got an auto response - we're closed right now ......... Nothing I can do but warn as many people as possible how rubbish they are.

Well it's over a week without internet, and yesterday I cancelled the new order with Vodafone because they're useless. The people I'm texting to seem to probably be abroad, and I cannot make them understand my problem. They're convinced I am an open reach customer and Vodafone fibre uses City Fibre's network here, so en engineer is required to fit the fibre to the premises. I already have city fibre to the premises but they won't believe me. So I've now signed up with a service called giganet - which my friend in the same boat ordered same day she got cut off. She gets hers connected Monday. Vodafone wanted an engineer to call on the 28th. So I'm back to square one.

Peter mentioned the 'sound' of digital comms. In this day and age of everyone being audio experts, it's very odd that digital comms audio quality seems rarely to even be considered and few people moan about their two-way radios. When considering clever two-way, it's 100% about the facilities, and never about how easy the audio is to understand. We seem to all be gradually learning to interpret low bit rate digital audio without even thinking about it. It's often even worse when you mix brands. They have common codecs, so voice come out - but a Motorola to a Kenwood always sounds more difficult to understand, and some brands seem worse with some, better with others - but somebody presses a button, says testing testing and if that comes out the other end, job done! Digital two-way is never tested with some bass drum or guitar in the background, and often, even with an ear piece it's just a mess. VOIP phones seem similar. The ones I have seem pretty good, but at the moment my land line rings my mobile and sometimes I really struggle.

I've always taken the view that the cables are universal conduits so should be transparent - no matter what is shoved down them. There are plenty of XLR cables out there still that don't even have a ground connection pin 1 - having been a speaker cable originally, and I have always smiled at how they actually work fine in many cases with absolutely no screening at all, but get found out when somebody swaps a dynamic for a condenser and it doesn't work! The notion that the shells need grounding for lights never made much sense. If the chassis ground goes live, you'd think less grounding on the interconnects would be better?

I've just spent a frustrating evening in the studio - Cubase 12 pro decided it needed to talk to the Steinberg server to authenticate the library, which of course failed, so I've managed to get the MacBook connected to the phone, and working, and then the MacBook wired into the network, which the studio computer then managed to link to to authenticate itself. So many things you forget about.

One of the cheapest and best tools for RF work is a simple SDR dongle - twenty five quid, free software and you can find anything from virtually audio to microwave!

I got things running by paying EE for their maximum data package on my phone. My NAS drives spotted it, and transferred all the video files from the office to the NAS - the new package ran out at 10Gb, that's it till the end of the month. Phone defaulted back to minimal data rate, so ok for text, impossible for audio and video files. I can't justify spending more money. I'll just have to live at the office for the next few weeks. Scrapped my home dish, and the aerial is a bit naff, so was getting most TV from t'internet too!

It's so annoying when people produce diagrams that add to the confusion. None of my cables have the pin 1 connected to the shell, because I can never be sure that this hasn't also been done elsewhere and I could introduce hums into the system via multiple grounding, but worse, in a fault condition on the wiring, you have the possibility that the full mains current fault, designed to go to ground and trip breakers routes via your audio cables. Of course, some equipment is designed to have the pin 1 tied to ground at that equipment XLR. Doing it to cables is bad news - potentially (pun intended) and unnecessary. Swapping a cable that was luckily grounding a leaky piece of kit could leave the dangerous voltages floating on a mic cable that you connect to a mic and hold to your lips ............... Chassis ground and signal grounds are totally different things. those tabs get used when they are designed to be used.

Lowestoft was picked as one of those experimental towns. City fibre have put the purple tubes under EVERY pavement in the town, nearly complete, so when BT could not give me fibre, they could - BUT - I then had to go with random people who could provide service. Wasn't expensive really. The local council are having to redo every pavement because the cables zig zag everywhere. I watched the guy with the trench cutter in the winter just set it off, put hands in pocket to keep warm, and then every now and then, give it a kick to point it away from the kerb or walls.Nowhere did they lay straight trenches. The town is a mess. City fibre's website contact pages has one 'other' category and the rest are 'workmen were rude', 'access to driveway blocked', 'fell into unattained trench' - stuff like that. The irony is the fibre connection boxes are now on top of every BT phone post in town, ready for the pre-made fibres to the homes, but BT cannot use them!

A while back, people were talking about theatre phone systems and how it works (or not) in a power cut. I lost my fibre internet at home this morning - they dug our streets up and connected the town a year or so ago, so I took the offer of fibre to the home and have had 500+ speeds for a year. Until today when it went dead. Then after attempts to reboot and make things happen to restore the 'service ok' LED, Royal Mail delivered a letter from the fibre supplier warning me Air Broadband are likely to cease service and telling me to sign up with somebody else, pronto. Two hours too late. I'm now without internet till the 28th. My burglar alarm noticed it and sent me a message saying it was running on cellular. Otherwise I would have not realised early this morning it had gone. It means my phone line is also dead, as that was now VOIP -as every phone will have to be soon when the old network is switched off. Most businesses are now using advanced features via VOIP. What happens if a venue like a theatre suddenly loses internet access. No phones to trigger the fire brigade, the police, no booking office, no safety systems. If the network dies the simplest tasks now stop dead. I can work from home or the office because I have a NAS drive that allows me to access everything from both locations, but not for three weeks. As this morning I'd been editing video in the office, my EE data for the month has gone as the computers here are trying to bring in 10Gb of video and audio. I really had not thought about this. My landline number won't ring - the voip system is of course not working. My bank locked me out of both the mobile app and the desktop web access because of network slo speed issues using the tethered phone - EE don't stop your data when it runs out, they just throttle it. Nothing I can do if the firm went bust - 13 million customers with a staff of less than two dozen I'm told. I'm just shocked how little I can do, work wise. I'll have to actually go into the office to reset my banking. We rely so much on networks nowadays. In the company who supplied me, there were 8 directors and they've been resigning since November - but I didn't know. How internet safe are you?

I have never seen a low budget projection system that did not just look tacky. All your front lights need to really tilt down from a height, but moist church halls tend to have lower than nice FOH angles, so a 1.8m person with their face lit, casts shadows all over the projection. Even people who hire in video walls never get realism, theirs are over bright, very saturated and look pixelated close in. Don;t forget the drop in brightness projecting onto anything other than a proper screen. Painting a wall white looks even worse. It's usually just naff - sorry.

Two Kodaks and a synchroniser went for £45 the other day on ebay - I think he started at £250. Millenials won't even know what slides are. The other day on the TV, they were in a projection room of a Cinema and looking at the 'old' projectors still sitting there. The presenter said they'd probably have been from the black and white movie days. The Dolby logo kind of revealed they were probably late 90's and they looked modern. They found loads of ads ready to be spliced together in a cupboard and the manager said she didn't know what was on them because they'd been told old film could burst into flames. 25 year old equipment treated like it was antique. Scary. I've got a carousel somewhere, and probably even some slides in the loft - for what will be on them, I really doubt that until you find a proper collector, they'll make anything. Developing E6 slides is still quite cheap - but this link shows that the one manufacturer of the actual slides doesn't;t make them any longer - so you get back a roll of film - you have to mount them somehow yourself!

If the shows coming through are one-nighters, then they will use yours to save them effort, if yours is adequate. Equally though, some of the shows coming through are likely to be kit wreckers. The ones where every red light is on, and they ask for a feed into the system that cuts out any EQ, limiting and protection your system, may have. These always worry me. I am happy to give them a left and right into our mixer - where we have control over maximum levels and can set a limiter. We also lock the desk when we go to lunch, because it has happened twice where their people have disconnected the protection, and on a digital desk, it's easy to miss a little repatching. Those that want gut wrenching sub level can use their own system, thanks. Most are great, but a few take liberties. even worse, many also are not gifted enough to understand house systems are usually designed to give planned volume levels aroiund the auditorium - as in nobody gets deafened and nobody struggles. The touring folk frequently have to ground stack, so get used to the volume at the mix point. They will turn your system up to get that same volume, and fry the front row. Their system has to do that, but a good venue one doesn't. I've had to evacuate our lighting box because I'm the furthest away and it's deafening. The toupees on the front row flap in the breeze. The only rider requirement is 'loud', rarely quality. Letting these people loose on decent systems is scary. Good incomers who understand systems go away very happy with almost any well chosen house system, installed and tuned properly. It goes wrong when the show is a bit er, energy focussed. One nighters doing Michael Jackson and Queen tend to be worst, because they are feel the bass shows. I'd rather they bring in their pile of Q subs than use mine!

Idiots. Anyway, tell them the ceiling has to be black. My studio here does not have enough height to lose much, so is really simple. Scaff tube to hang the lights from and cut so the walls prevent sideways movement, and the weight supported direct from the ground on vertical tubes. I can hang and move things in a jiffy, and as the trim height is only just over 9ft, (too low really) 10ft to the ceiling, adjusting in my case is simple. Hanging requires some steps, that's all. Studio rail is great, but for this studio is a waste of money, because once you get a few things up in the air, you always end up adding another between them. Big spring clamps look after the drapes. They also have a clumsy person advantage. If, on my own, I trip or knock things, they let go and I have not ripped anything since starting the system. I think if the drapes were tracked, I'd have lost loads of ties from being careless.

Brian's yellow book is a really useful and practical document, well worth getting, but I get the sense you're not quite understanding the point? If you are looking for a magic figure for a stage X wide by Y deep, you won't find it. Occupancy in the linked document is for the building - the premises where people in it expect to be safe. Practically, the numbers backstage and on stage are determined by not just safety, but by space to wait, work and perhaps even eat? When authorities compare seated venues with standing venues, they don't just look at the numbers per m2 or foot room - they look for how the space is used. Clearly on stage this is even more variable. You can put more choir members on stage than dancers. At some point it goes wrong. Can 30 dancers get off stage quick enough for 30 more to come on, or do the new 30 have to be on stage, so the 30 can leave? See the problem? There are no 'rules' that can deal with this, because one group of 200 dancers could be safe and have space, but another group of 100 could be crazily unsafe? Quite a few licences do not quote a maximum number - maybe one area, maybe a busy bar/nightc club may have a capacity dictated, others might just specify number of fire exits per X people. There could be a 1400 capacity venue that doesn't even mention cast/crew numbers, or specify where they must be. When the numbers are not specified, then it's the venue responsibility to maintain safety. You do your own risk assessment and determine if the venue is safe. We do loads of dance events - some very well organised by the hirer, others totally disorganised - so we might have one where they only sell half the capacity of the auditorium, and fill the empty seats with performers, parents and chaperones, so backstage is less hectic. Others seem to have so many kids, usually sitting on the floor in the open spaces they fill with rails and screens, that you have to sort of wade through them. The choice to use, or not use the safety curtain in this venue is the venues choice. It is not required to be used and is not part of the venue licence. With a high capacity of kids on stage, it could be safer to evacuate, if necessary, the kids into the auditorium. What would worry me would be a full capacity auditorium, and then excess people on stage and backstage. Nowhere for them to go in an emergency. Even a false alarm would be chaotic, because the people 'in charge' would be unable to effectively evacuate them - no room. I'd suggest this is when the Technical Manager would need to form an internal rule, based on the knowledge of the venue, and the people likely to be in it. Adults vs children is another component to maximise safety. An external directive would no doubt be based on complete, but professional instinct. In the old Chief Fire Officer days, these people had the experience and knowledge to look around, use their history and make a decision. For 15 years our capacity was reduced to 1200, from 1426. One day the venue was hired by the licensing authority, who needed 1400 seats. The 1200 was increased simply by adding one of the exits into the calculation which we had always not done - it's an access to a bar, that has big exits. It was determined to be an effective and adequate extra fire exit and the capacity went up again. It's really going to be on your shoulders, I suspect.

I've had struggles with the system for panto, just going into Belfast. The rules for EU countries are a real mess. The Government system of trader support is firmly pointed at SELLING the goods that go in and out. Items that are personal and going to be used for work should come under the carnet system, and friends who go in and out with video cameras report the system works fine, as long as your point of entry is a big, busy one. Moving cameras and allied kit is made a bit easier because organisations like the GTC offer members cheaper carnet systems. However, they are often also offered by your local chamber of commerce - worth a Google and phone call. Essentially its a list, in great detail of every item of gear, and must include identification marks - so numbers, codes, serial numbers, that kind of thing, along with how much it cost and current value, and details of any VAT component if relevant. There is a multi-part, coloured form. At the point where you have exported the equipment from the UK, the form is signed and stamped, and then when it is re-imported, a different copy is signed and once the customs have the in and out points identified - all is well. If you left the UK and 'exported' the item, but returned and did NOT get the form stamped, then you would be liable for any VAT and duty payable as you have effectively exported it permanently. It means that in the unlikely circumstance of the equipment being stolen, then you will have exported a 6 grand lighting desk. VAT at 19 or 20% and possibly 4% duty will be payable - for having no control to return. A friend a few years back got a piece of gear scrapped while he was away - it got smashed by a flight case and he left it at a venue while on tour. In the end, he returned, collected the item and returned it to the UK, got the paperwork signed and that was cheaper! Customs understand carnets. It says Make, model and a serial number - they look, identify and sign. That's it. They are however, not cheap documents, and need doing properly - including anything in the box - so power supplies and any accessory that looks expensive - like a monitor you bought cheap - it still needs to be on the carnet if they can see it!

I'm left with the impression that you want something really simple, but really easy to use and good enough quality people will watch it (and pay for it?) I wonder if you have thought this through? If I have understood correctly, there will be one camera per pitch. This rather dictates the camera has to be on the halfway line, and then with wide angle lenses you might just see the goal at each side. Corners on the camera side of the pitch will be missing. Of course you could have an automated ball following system, if the budget for multiple of these is there. You also need to factor in the costs for whoever 'collect's the video and makes it available online. One camera is hardly going to be gripping for people to want to watch - a teeny ball, players hardly distinguishable? You either need to cable the power and return video and possible control for the PTZ camera if that's how you wish to go, back to a central point - or wifi capable cameras and a multiple pitch wifi system won't be a set and forget. The cameras will need weather protection probably. Why do you want to record at each camera position? How are you thinking about getting the video back to the control position? Some cameras also work pretty poorly in low light, so your choices might be further limited. The biggest negative is the purpose. Do the players want the recordings - either as play/pay on demand or on sticks, cards or other media? Remember static video is dreadfully dull. So much football happens in tiny corners of a frame. A dodgy tackle on a wide angle lens will be just a tackle - not detail. If you want detail, you need people, and expensive kit. A 5 a side venue in my area used to have security cameras and the pictures were so boring, nobody wanted to watch them. On a practical issue - don't forget that the camera angles also need height to allow people to assess distance and see detail. The touchline cameras on pro football are great for action near them, but the angles are terrible for seeing goal mouth action - the images are blocked by players and it's impossible to tell if the ball is coming towards or away from the camera. Add 30ft, maybe by mounting on floodlight poles and it looks better. Realistically, whatever you want can be done, but for the video to be easy to watch, humans, equipment and money are all needed. You say no budget yet - but if you have 5 pitches, with one camera per pitch, power and video distribution and some simple kit to record - like a recorder per camera, it would not be hard to get to ten grand without even trying. Adding pan, tilt and zoom, cabled or radio links, more cameras and operators and the budget could be a project killer. Waterproof housings, hardware cables, and installation could be a considerable sum before you even turn a camera on. It's a perfectly doable project - but with people able to see decent sports video so easily, a security camera style, fixed and dull system probably would serve little purpose?

Yes, concur on too much signal. I’m convinced signal strength is rarely the issue, it’s those big cancellation zones, the black holes where a full scale signal just vanishes, only to reappear full scale as soon as the person takes two steps to the left! I’m not convinced on the side by side issue, the physics remains the same despite it being radio mics and not comms. Is the process of two antennas and two cables and two receivers different from a combiner, two antennas, one cable and one receiver? I don’t think so? At least not in terms of what happens to the polar pattern. Side by side distorts the pattern to be more directional. I’m not sure that’s a good problem solver. even worse, now we’ve gone digital and the damn things don’t hiss, all we can rely on are the signal strength displays and they don’t show trends. You can hear tint amounts of receive signal strength changes on analogue, but the digital meters seem sort of ‘averaged’ with going up or going down very difficult to see.

This has always surprised me a little - the communication industry stack or bay directional antennas as a matter of course, but it's mainly to increase gain and decrease beam width, so I'd always linked that to not having any real multiparty reduction advantage, apart from the one gained by the increased focus of a two, or four coupling of antennas. Multipath reduction was the version I'd always thought was primarily to do with different paths to the same working area. Odd that Shure have sort of 'commandeered' gain boosting as a multiparty solution, when they occupy almost the same space. With typical paddle designs, ¼ wave side by side baying is quite possible, and is the most efficient, ¾ wavelength apart baying doesn't seem to offer and advantages (or disadvantages) over ¼ and I just struggle to see the close spacing really doing anything for multipath problems. I'm not sure if somewhere in a dim memory there was an issue with baying log-periodic - something about parasitic elements of one having an impact on the other antenna as distances are very similar. Jaybeam, before they morphed into Amphenol had a version of their 4 stack antennas that were horizontal across a boom, vertically polarised, with the standard power splitter harness, but it didn't last long - I wonder if this is the same issue, and why vertical stacking works best, but of course gain is their primary purpose. Interesting. Trantec always used to recommend wide spacing.

The cable loss is rarely a problem because absolute maximum signal is not that important, but the avoidance of those no signal zones. You often see people put antennas close together, but what is the point of diversity? It’s so when one path from pack/mic to antenna is a poor one, the other is good. Put the antennas close together and that dead spot is dead for both. A stereo mic bar on a stand is not how to mount two antennas. I offered one show one of our mic stands which they refused saying the6 always did it like this, and the. Waited for the turn to stand in that one place where they cut out. Stage left to that spot is always a problem, but moving one antenna upstage, always cures it. I think it’s a reflection from a very big metal covered wall cancelling it out.

Linked to this topic - I'm having a little battle with Ebay's Global Shipping Programme - A large purchase from the US of a product, and the system basically slaps on the UK VAT to the price at the point you pay - They have charged the 20% but cannot seem to supply me with a VAT document saying it's been paid on my behalf. UPS Fedex etc will all do this so the input tax can be accounted for. Ebay have charged me VAT, but can't produce anything I can use to reclaim it. Anyone else discovered this? Hopefully there will be a system. The best they could do was show the VAT in the import box, and show VAT as 0% There are only two options import duty and VAT. Surely they must be able to provide something?

I sell imported radios - mainly marine ones but a few clever ham products, and over the past year the prices have gone up crazily. I'll order in usually 10's - and then reorder when stock down to 2 or 3, so perhaps six weeks/8 weeks between orders. margin normally between 20 and 30% on the cost price after VAT and other costs. A popular radio a year ago was £199, now to maintain that margin it would need to be 309 - and at that price sales have dropped, so that ones is off the list now. Another Class A marine radio was always available so I could sell it - and it was genuinely a good deal at £240 - now the cost price is £260 - again, in the space of a year. I'm an authorised re-seller for Yaesu and Kenwood, via the main dealer, and the aviation radio bargains I was selling have moved from a retail price of £250 up to £300. Worse is that the shipping fees have also risen crazily too - so for one of my suppliers, it's actually cheaper to post ten separate packages via UPS that it is to send 10 in one box. The postage on some expensive military style radios was £90 for just a small order of 3 - totally order cost about £660, but £750 with the shipping. Containers and therefore part containers are not an option either - if you try that, for a smaller order - say a quarter of a container, then 90 days, and over a grand is typical, plus the clearance and end shipping fees. I had a customer who wanted some larger speaker cabinets. I found a supplier and the price was pretty good, but the shipping killed it. Cheaper to order from Thomann. I increased prices each time the cost price went up. Anything over 20Kgs and over .2m3 starts to get very pricey indeed if it comes via air.